From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed May 07 2003 - 20:21:22 BST
Hi Platt,
> > I think the word "morality" more consicely conveys the idea of a set of
> > shared patterns than "reality" does, which implies an "objective
>reality"
> > and doesn't highlight the role of human understanding.
>
>"Objective reality" or a reality that is independent of living beings
>(H.O.I.E. or Hypothesis of Independent Existence) is rejected by the
>MoQ, not to mention quantum physics.
You're telling me?!?! You're the one who's always insisting on a universal
truth, aren't you? A way things "really" are? I was talking about how the
words were used, the connotations of them, and why, though they all mean the
same thing in the MoQ (and in "reality"), there is a good reason to use
morality as opposed to reality or experience. I thought you left it out
becuase YOU thought morality was only the "stale old static patterns" and I
was reminding you that morality is everything. You don't have to tell me
that.
> > Experience goes
> > even further along that scale, implying a totally subjective reality
>that
> > doesn't highlight the shared nature of morality and the interdependency
>of
> > humans.
>
>Experience is universal. So morality (as defined by Pirsig) is universally
>shared. Interdependency is secondary to the primary reality of
>experience.
Yes morality is universally shared. But experience happens to one
consciousness at a time. When two people share an experience, like the same
feeling when listening to Rachmaninov, it is because they share static
patterns. So I wouldn't say that interdependency is secondary, because the
static patterns that interpret the experience and give it meaning have to be
there first. Rachmaninov had to come first, and someone had to introduce
you to him, before you could experience his concerto, so there is a
dependence there before your experience. And others depend on you to
educate them about static patterns, or Rachmaninov might never be
experienced again. Pure experience without any static patterns in which the
experience acts means that there is no difference between the experience of
a blow job and a hand grenade, or whatever the stale old metaphor we use
around here is...
> > Morality sits right in the middle of the scale of subjectivity and
> > objectivity, connotation-wise. It is closest to "the Tao", which
>Buddhism
> > calls "the middle way", and is how CS Lewis chose to refer to morality
>so
> > as to not confuse the reader with the readers or author's "own" morality
>or
> > specific culture.
>
>Morality in the MoQ is not restricted as in common parlance to how
>humans out to dutifully behave in mind or body, either the "middle way"
>or "outside the box." Pirsig "frees" morality from that stale old static
>pattern.
That's what I meant by "Connotation-wise" Platt. The "common parlance" of
those words is in each case less than what the MoQ says about them. You
dutifully expanded reality and experience and value, but left morality to
rot in the common parlance. Pirsig freed it from the modern negative
connotation, but you tried to keep its liberation hushed up.
> > And it's pretty sly of you to temper my satisfaction by also adding
>"value"
> > to the list at the same time, which is perhaps the most benign word in
>the
> > entire language. You really want to resist letting morality get any
> > recognition, don't you?
>
>Morality as you like to define it is a set of social patterns that varies
>from culture to culture. Exceptions to your claim of "universal" moral
>social patterns such as adultery are easily found. Morality as Pirsig
>defines it includes but transcends social patterns.
When I talk about the universal morality, I am talking the same universal
morality that Pirsig is. It is superfolous however to say that we live in
reality, so the usual meaning that comes out when I use the word morality is
the cultural context. You agreed with Mati that context is another term for
reality in that post, but here you see a need to make a distinction (though
you say I make the disctinction, which is laughable, my whole mission here
has been to get people to see social morality on the same ontologically
significant MoQ terms, not a different kind of morality but the exact same
thing as gravity and carbon bonding). Phyllis was looking for shared moral
precepts that different cultures might have in common with which to settle
conflicts, so I supplied her with some like adultery. You don't have to
tell me that not all cultures have the same things in common, but to
satisfactorily work out conflicts without coercion, they had better find
some from which to begin to agree. You are sounding a lot like the cultural
relativists you usually mock all of a sudden, you know.
> > I guess as a libertarian, you don't want to imply
> > that people have a right to care about what other people do as long as
>they
> > let other people alone to do their own thing also, so you resist using
>the
> > word used to mean a shared morality that is synonomous with objective
> > reality.
>
>People can do whatever they want so long as they don't harm or
>threaten harm to others. "Caring" feeds the ego and gives rise to
>victimology. Our "shared morality" is that we all live in a sea of values.
Sure they CAN, but they shouldn't. They should do what they should.
Denying this is denying the whole principle that keeps patterns together, it
would make the universe collapse into nothing. It makes a distinction
between between social morality and the whole of morality as to how they
work and what they are. Social morality, because it is stale and old, need
not be followed, but the rest of morality, well that's different. They are
the same. It is wrong to redefine social morality as what people prudently,
rationally, ought to do, divorcing it from the patterns of what people
actually do. This is why what people actually do is important, because
their actions create morality, and morality is what causes people to do what
they do.
Johnny
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